“See? All you need Riley is a firm hand to keep you in check. I know dogs, my dad had a few and you are confused about who is the big bad boss of our pack. I am here to tell you that I am the alpha male and if you want to come with me you better accept that. Got it?”
He set the dog down, but kept his one hand firmly on the scruff of its neck, with the other he picked up the rabbit and offered it to the dog, it snapped at him again and he shook it, the second time he offered the rabbit it licked the dead animal's bloody fur. Red let it do that for a few minutes, then dropped the carcass and started petting the dog again. Finally he let go of the scruff and the dog just stood there, looking at him, then nosing the rabbit, then looking at him again.
“Take it girl, you can have it.” The dog picked up the rabbit and started chomping into it. Red stepped back, wondering if it would follow him or just stay and finish the meal he had provided. “You can come with me if you want. I wouldn't mind the company and I think Nita will like you.” He turned and started to walk away, Riley picked up the rabbit and followed him.
The journey back to where he had left his two companions took a couple hours, the countryside was rugged, not flat as he had always imagined the mid west. In addition to the rises and falls of the land there seemed to be a minor river or lake every quarter mile, most of the rivers and streams he could jump, but the lakes he had to go around. The farm was empty. This concerned him. He approached the van that Nita had stuffed the zombies into and opened the back door, it was empty. Or rather almost empty, there was a chest in the back, it looked like it was made out of cedar and was about two feet wide, three long and maybe twenty inches tall. The sides of the chest were coated with black blood that Red recognized as the kind zombies bled out. Flies were thick in the van as well, a whole cloud of them rose up as he pulled the chest out onto the gravel road.
Before he opened it he knew he could guess what was inside; either Nita or Hugh. Riley whined nervously near his feet. Unlike with the humans Red couldn't differentiate between zombies very well. If they were close, within a mile or two, he could tell his friends apart from the run of the mill zombies around them, but that was mostly due to how they moved and acted. He unlatched the chest and flipped the lid back. Nita's open eyes stared out at him, unseeing. Her arms were missing and her legs had been hacked off near the upper part of her thighs. Her stomach was ripped open and her entrails had been removed, cut up and dumped back into the cavity where they had been before. Red had become somewhat of a student of anatomy and he could tell the parts in Nita had been stirred up, he couldn't tell if she had still been alive when it had happened, but assumed so. No one would have a reason to do this after she had been put down. The top of her skull was hacked up and the bone was broken into shards that shown whitely through the black, sticky blood. Gently Red lifted the top of her skull, revealing an empty cavity underneath it. Whomever it was had hacked the top of her skull off and scooped her brains out to kill her.
Fuming Red threw his head back and screamed, he took a step towards the van and smashed the back of it with his fist, tearing a hole through the metal, plastic and glass, causing it to roll over onto its side. He went after the vehicle as if it was the thing that had caused him so much pain, stooping he picked it up and lifted it over his head, half spinning he stopped and threw it into the farm house a hundred yards away, it crunched through the porch roof and ended up at an angle with the engine resting in the living room.
Looking back at Nita he said, “I don't care what it takes. I will find the sonofabitch who did this and make him pay. I will make him pay. I am so sorry Nita, so sorry. You were a little fucked in the head but I could have loved you, I really could have.” Somehow leaving her there to be eaten by maggots didn't seem right to Red, so he brought the chest over to the house and kicked in the front door, he set the chest down in the living room ten feet in front of where the van had come to rest. Then he went to the barn and looked around, it didn't take him long to spot the gas cans on the shelf by the tractors. Riley backed away from Red's anger, going over the ditch and into the field with the bit of her rabbit that remained.
Ten minutes later, with a smoking pillar behind him Red was stalking down the road after the tail end of the horde. Along the way he tried to convince himself to calm down, to think and plan. Nita had been almost as strong as Red was, the zombie or zombies that had killed her were likely to be able to order him around as well. Except for anger, anger always made things difficult. Scanning ahead Red found he could spot the source of his anger quite easily, even though he was well out of visual range of the thing. It almost looked human. The swirling colors of the zombie told Red right where it was and upon seeing this he did stop.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” The thing had to be as strong as him, probably it was the secondary zombie who had traveled to Chicago to make sure that city fell. It might have consumed more living than Red, it might have been brought back from the dead sooner too, which were disadvantages if he were to fight it fairly. Watching it he could tell it had spotted him too, because it stopped moving. It was waiting for him.
'
Chapter 25
Stewart turned the car sharply, avoiding the wreckage ahead of her as she tried to get them closer to the burning city ahead of them. There seemed to be numerous huge fires in Sioux City South on the Nebraska side of the state line. The road had been clear almost the entire way, the worst thing the two of them had to contend with was occasionally having to drive on the shoulder as they made their way east. Now it looked like their luck had changed. The smoke was not so thick that it was interfering with their ability to navigate yet, but they could smell it and they could see a haze near the ground ahead of them.
“It looks like the road will go a little south of where stuff is burning.” Max said.
“I think so, yeah, what does our map look like?”
“Oh let me see…nothing, our map looks like nothing!” Max said grating his teeth together. They had stopped at a farm house well off the beaten path to let Stewart wash up and get different clothing on. Max had taken the opportunity to get cleaned up as well and had brought their map in to look at while Stewart was showering. When they left Max had forgotten the map on the kitchen table. “We could have stopped and picked up a new one at that last gas station.”
“It doesn't matter, we know we were going to follow twenty until it turned into highway one twenty nine, then take that over the river to Iowa. Whoa! Would you look at that!” Stewart said pointing up at the sky ahead of them. A helicopter gun ship was hovering almost directly in front of them, perhaps a mile ahead, smoke was pouring out of some sort of machine gun mounted on one side of the thing. From here, even with the car sealed shut, they could hear the distant drone of automatic gunfire.
“Ah, Stewart, that doesn't look good.”
“No shit? Maybe we better stop for a map. I don't think we can go much further on highway twenty.” Ahead of them a ragged soldier ran up the side of the road to the shoulder, waving his arms to get their attention. “Zombie!” screamed Stewart, aiming the car towards it and stepping on the gas.
“It might not be….Stewart! It might just be a guy who needs help!” at the last possible second the man jumped back and Stewart swerved right to avoid him. Max got a good look at the guy and turned to her and yelled, “Stop!” at the top of his lungs. Stewart, surprised, slammed on her brakes, the car started to slide sideways and she let off enough to straighten out, muttering something about “too cheap to have cars with anti-lock brakes” under her breath.
Stewart turned to Max to find out just what was so important to stop for, she didn't see any obstacles in the road ahead or any hordes scrambling out of the ditch to attack them either. Max, however slipped off his seat belt and jumped out of the car without a word to her. The next time she saw him was in the rear view mirror, running towards the zombie with his pistol out, but pointed down towards the ground. She unbuckled herself, pulled out the shotgun and followed him to the soldier. When she was ten steps away she watched Max point his gun at a stalwart looking man a few years older than he was. The two were talking and the older man hadn't raised his rifle towards Max, but he hadn't put it down either.
Max turned back towards her and yelled, “He is alive! He isn't one of them! Stewart he is alive!” then he
